


Mars is there, waiting to be reached

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [315]
Category: Glee
Genre: F/M, Mars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:08:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29737113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: Annie has finally landed on Mars for her first (of many) missions. It is time for some exploration and a very deep consideration.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: Leoverse [315]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541





	Mars is there, waiting to be reached

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is a **spin-off sequel** for Broken Heart Syndrome. This means that, despite not being properly set after BHS (but that's only because BHS is probably never going to have a proper ending and we'll keep talking about these people forever), it depicts things happening way late in the 'verse, and that may be on varying degrees of spoiler.
> 
> Written for: Lande di Fandom's COW-T #11 (Week 3 - M4)  
> prompt: Exploration/Mars

The landing on the surface of Mars is not as dreadful as she had feared but it is way harsher than during simulation on Earth. Her ass will be really sore tomorrow. She takes a mental note to flip off the guys back home during their first video call. 

“Hang in there, Doc,” the pilot says, winking at her. “Five minutes and we're out of this highly inflammable rocket.”

Annie has been a bioengineer for five years at this point, but it still feels surreal to hear people calling her doctor. Even though she suspects Lila is doing that just to cheer her up because she is a good person like that. It is everybody's first time on Mars and, judging by the past three missions, the Red Planet has the tendency not to go easy on humans. It is nice to have at least one of your companions on your side.

Annie is not scared or worried, though. First, she has never been that kind of person. Secondly, she has wanted this for most of her adult life and she is not going to get nervous now that she is about to finally set foot on another freaking planet. The only thing she is missing right now is Adam – but he can be troublesome at times, so she can enjoy her martian vacation without feeling too bad about it.

The airlock of the shuttle opens and they can all float outside. It is the military team first, the five engineers, her and then the pilot last. Annie has seen all the photos that were available to her, the rovers' reports, the computer reconstructions, but nothing beats the real thing standing right in front of her eyes. The surface of the planet is a stretch of red soil, extending as far as the eye can see. She can see hills on the distance and the beginning of a crater just a few miles from there.

The only thing interrupting her line of sight is the temporary base the previous mission has put up to start operations a couple of years ago. One of the purposes of Annie's own mission is to turn that base into a permanent settlement and expand it to host more people, hence the five engineers.

“We go settle in now,” Lila the pilot informs her through their communication system. “Then we can start with the boring meetings and everything else.”

“Go ahead, I'll catch up with you,” Annie says, smiling. “I want to enjoy this feeling a little longer.”

“There's going to be a fight for the rooms,” Lila says, raising an eyebrow. She has never been on a Mars mission before, but she has been on many other Earth missions and she knows that they have the tendency of turning grown up men and women back into teenagers. People running over each other for the top bed on a bunker bed, people punching each other for even less. Madness, basically. “You want to be there, trust me.”

Annie shrugs. “I can sleep anywhere,” she says. “I don't care.”

“Fine, red, suit yourself,” Lila gives up and starts walking towards the base. “Just don't wonder too far. We don't really know this place yet.”

“I won't, I promise. I just want to take a look around.”

Annie turns around and walk in the opposite direction, following a crack in the ground that looks like a path. She feels like Alice in Wonderland, but sadly lacking a magical purple cat. The hardest thing to get used too, she thinks, will be the different color of the light, of the sky, of anything really. It is not like changing country – where the colors around you are not in the same combinations but still inherently the same – it is changing world completely and having to deal with a deserting stretch of red and black and gray. It is like looking around with a permanent filter over your eyes.

The crack in the ground leads her to a little valley and then to a small group of rocks that looks exactly like a petrified forest. She has been literally everywhere on Earth, but this right here is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her entire life – maybe just because it still feels impossible to her that she's really here, 56 million km from home, on a mostly unknown planet. 

Every time she thinks about it, her head starts spinning.

She decides to sit down and enjoy the sight of space from here. She thought outer space was black, but it's really not. There are nuances in the darkness, traces of blues and purples, light coming from unexpected places and reflecting on alien surfaces. She can see patterns on the ground and on the rocks she is sitting on right now. Adam hates the term still life. He says life is never still, that everything is changing constantly and that light is the most mutable thing there is, the more powerful, because it can change everything else with its mere presence.

Annie had to come so far away to understand his words. She can see now how vibrant the planet is, even in the few colors that it has to offer. How it is not still at all, how it moves constantly in the curves and bending of its hills and valley.

She takes a picture and then another and another with the camera in her headgear. She promises to herself to take many more photos during her stay, to show them to her husband and comment them with him during their calls. She promises to come back to him richer and more in tune with the world around her – her own or another one, it doesn't matter – to be more like him, beautiful and full of colors.

Coming here, she thought she was going to miss too much time with Adam.

But it turns out he came along, one way or the other.


End file.
